CHAPTER 47
Yamini woke up on the floor the next morning.
The marble was cold beneath her, and for a moment she didn't understand why. Then she remembered.
Her robe had twisted around her legs sometime in the night. Her face felt tight, the skin around her eyes stiff from crying. The room was grey with early light.
She sat up slowly.
The connecting door was still closed. She didn't look at it for long.
Her bed remained untouched, the sheets still tucked the way Savita made them each morning. She hadn't slept in this room in over a month.
She got up and walked to it anyway, sitting on the edge of the mattress.
For a long time, she didn't move.
She thought about the scarf on his chair. The book on his desk. Her hairbrush beside his razor. All the small things she had let migrate into his life because he had never asked her to take them back.
She thought about how she had believed that meant something.
It didn’t.
She looked outside the window and stared blankly.
She thought of her first marriage.
Marrying Rahul had been a rebellion. A door she'd run through without fully believing in what was on the other side. Some part of her had always been braced for it to fail.
But she had stayed longer than she should have for all the wrong reasons.
This marriage had started the same way. A challenge. A contract. Another door she didn't fully believe in.
She had thought she could walk away in three years. Except somewhere along the way, without deciding to, she had fallen in love.
Bharat Jogra had wanted her to.
He spent months letting her fall. He gave her meaningful things. Took her to the frozen lake. To the cabin. Spent time with her in the palace. Let her believe in a future with his eyes in their child's face.
But last night, he had told her none of it was real.
He had taken revenge in the cruelest way possible.
Yamini continued staring.
At some point, when the grey light turned to gold, she slowly stood up.
She went to the bathroom and showered for a long time, longer than she needed to, standing under the water until it ran cold. She scrubbed at her skin like she could scrub away the night before. It didn't work, but she came out anyway.
She walked to her closet and chose something plain. It was a dress she owned before she became the Jogra maharani.
She dressed slowly.
By the time she was ready, she knew what she was going to do.
It was 9:01. Sunlight spilled across the dining hall, lighting up the tall windows that framed the snow-capped mountains.
Yamini paused at the threshold.
For weeks she had walked into this room willingly. Smiling. Sitting beside him. Not caring that the staff saw them together when she fed him pieces of buttery paratha or took sips of the pink-hued noon chai from his teacup.
The memories made her chest ache.
Bharat was already seated.
He wore a dark blue shirt, sleeves folded once at the wrist, a tablet open in front of him. His tea sat exactly where it always sat. The fruit was arranged in clean lines.
He didn't look up immediately when she walked in.
The small detail cut deeper than anger.
He looked exactly the same as he did every morning. As though last night hadn't happened at all.
She took the seat across from him instead of beside him.
His eyes lifted then.
His golden-brown eyes were calm and assessing.
The staff finished placing the dishes and left, the doors closing behind them.
It was just the two of them now.
The silence stretched.
She didn't touch the food.
“I'm leaving Jogra Palace,” she said.
There was no shake in her voice.
His gaze held hers for a moment. Then he closed the tablet and set it aside.
“You cannot.”
It wasn’t a question but a decision he'd already made.
Her jaw tightened. “I refuse to stay married to a man who plans to get me impregnated by another. And how did you plan it? Was I supposed to visit that man at his place? Or were you planning to have him come to my room when I’m ovulating?”
Something flickered in his eyes. “No other man will touch you,” he said.
She stared at him.
“The procedure will be through discreet IVF,” he continued, his voice steady.
The words came out clinical. Sterile. As though he were describing a factory expansion.
She let out a short, disbelieving laugh. “How very generous of you.”
He didn't react.
“It will be private,” he added. “Everything will be under control.”
Control.
Everything with him was about control.
Her fingers curled against the edge of the table. She stood up so fast the chair scraped against the marble.
“You can’t tell me how and when I can have a child. You don't own my body!”
His eyes didn't move from hers.
“The contract gives me that authority.”
The air left her lungs.
He hadn't shouted it or said it like a threat. He had said it like a fact, and that was what made it hurt more than anything else he could have done.
She knew he was right and that the contract did include a clause allowing him to dictate the terms for when she could conceive.
She made herself stand straight.
“Then enforce the contract breach,” she said.
The emerald fish pendant rested cool against the base of her throat. She had thought it meant something between them. Now she knew better.
She pulled it off in one sharp movement. The chain snapped against her skin. She threw it across the table. It slid over the polished wood and stopped near his untouched teacup.
He didn't reach for it. He didn't even look at it.
“If you want to destroy me for revenge,” she said, her voice shaking now, no matter how hard she tried to hold it, “do it properly.”
“I don't care if you ruin my reputation,” she said. “My finances. My name. Do whatever you want with all of it.”
Her voice shook despite everything she did to hold it steady.
“But you will not get to decide whose child grows inside me.”
He rose from his chair slowly, every movement controlled.
“You will not leave this palace,” he said.
Her pulse pounded at his low command. But she didn't step back.
“Watch me,” she said.
For a fraction of a second, something moved behind his eyes.
But he said nothing.
She turned and walked toward the doors.
They opened before she reached them.
The staff outside straightened, startled by how fast she was moving. They were probably shocked by the anger and tears that ran down her cheeks.
She didn't slow down. She walked past them without a word, her shoes hitting the marble in hard, fast steps.
He didn't follow her or call her back.
This time, she didn't expect him to.